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I read this at UWM faculty senate last week. It was not on the agenda. It is too long. People indulged me. This is in response to “Swastika Boy” at UWM last Monday. What is happening makes my heart ache and twists my gut. Maybe this is too long for you to read. But maybe you will read it anyway.
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I work closely with a grad student who is a TA, the instructor of record, of one of our English Department’s core composition courses. The white supremacist student who held the swastika poster last week is one of his undergraduate students in the course. The other students in the course were freaked out by these events and felt seriously threatened. My graduate mentee was freaked out, and he felt he had to cancel classes because of the extreme risk of an unsafe environment. He felt that there was no one to turn to that would understand their fear, after reading the official UWM statement about the incident. This is what I feel is lacking in our institutional understanding. I continually witness this argument of the complexities of and protections for ”free speech,” when it is genocidal speech, murderous speech, as if such acts are without historical and current contexts that set dark and dangerous precedent. The symbol of hate isn’t just a violence in itself, which it is, but a signifier of rightwing grooming for larger acts of hate, of escalating violence that results in Poway, Pittsburgh, Oak Creek, Christchurch. We, as an institution and as intellectuals, need to understand the rise of neofascism in our times. These are not disconnected, stochastic events, but are campaigns on the dark-web, grooming sessions for disaffected and alienated young white men who everyone can disavow as “crazy,” “disturbed,” “attention seekers,” “losers…”. Until the next one, and the next one, and the next one that comes ready to “go all in.”

Here’s what I don’t understand about UWM policies: 1) We don’t allow guns on campus. 2) We don’t allow smoking on campus. 3) We don’t allow dogs (except in specific circumstances) on campus. 4) We would probably have issues with nudity on campus…. Yet, we proclaim the importance and necessity of allowing concrete and specific acts of hate speech in forms that are known to be both corrosive to civility, but also, and more importantly, constitutive of direct violence against specific people and groups of people. These are campaigns, not individual instances, and they are coordinated, with escalating consequences.

I am not referring here to controversial or extreme political positions. I am referring to concrete acts, signs, symbols and language that are premised upon the past, present, and projected future, slaughter of innocent people.

In conclusion, I propose that we set up a serious investigation into this rise of rightwing nationalist populism, in order to understand its recruitment strategies and dynamics aimed at colleges and universities. We are contextually blind without this knowledge. I propose that we create specific mandates about speech guidelines in our public and classroom spaces regarding expressions specific to the killing of other people, and I propose that our administrative response in the future is less equivocal and more emphatic about these issues, not framing them as a vague understanding of the rights of a few disaffected individuals, but as the threat to our core values, and to the safety of our community that will not be tolerated.

Twenty visits to a doctor, thirty-two tests or screenings, six doctors, and countless pills: this is my new reality. In the summer of 2018, I began feeling flushed and nauseated. I would wake at 3am and run to the toilet to empty the contents of my stomach. I would go purchase diapers for my newborn daughter and get so overwhelmed by the urge to vomit that I could barely stand. The worst part: I had no insurance. I am a graduate student and teaching assistant at Marquette University, and I do not have healthcare through my employer. We did once, but in the three years since I began working as a teaching assistant, I have witnessed the cost of insurance skyrocket, only to be taken away entirely. I can barely get by on the $16k a year stipend; I certainly cannot afford to pay hundreds a month out of pocket for insurance. So, I have gone without. Imagine how thrilled I became when my uncontrollable bouts of nausea and vomiting was joined by intense abdominal pain.

It took a few months after symptoms appeared for me to finally be approved for Medicaid, my only option since my employer denies me access to healthcare. Of course, I only qualified for Medicaid because my employer’s “discounted” child care rates are more than $1,000 a month, which meant that my wife stopped working to take care of our daughter. I’m lucky she made that decision, because once I had my Medicaid card in hand, I visited my doctor. It turns out that my spleen, normally around four inches, is nearly nine inches long, and after six months of tests and scans, the reason why it is enlarged remains a mystery. Both of my hematologists believe I could have an incredibly rare form of cancer that does not show up in bone marrow biopsies, which I have endured. So, I now await the results of the most recent blood tests, hoping they tell me why I am sick but also hoping I don’t have cancer. If they come back negative, the next step is a trip to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, which may or may not accept my government insurance. If the Mayo Clinic does not accept my insurance, I may be forced to turn to GoFundMe to help end my torment. Without insurance and without addressing the underlying issues, the cost of removing my spleen alone is more than $67k.

In all the months since summer 2018 that I have sat through the fatigue of the tests, the visits, the continued symptoms, and the stress over financing it all, I never failed to complete my duties as a teaching assistant. I lead discussions. I grade papers and exams. I cover lectures when the professor is out of town or ill. I meet with students inside and outside of office hours to help them understand difficult material. I complete all reading assignments given to the students and take extensive notes so that I know the material well enough to teach or clarify. I hold review sessions after normal school hours to give students one last chance to ask a question or have material explained before the final exam. Despite my work as a teaching assistant, I continue to rely on government assistance for basic access to healthcare, something my employer should provide. I, like my fellow graduate workers, put our hearts and souls into our jobs to ensure the success of our students or the research projects to which we are assigned. Yet the administration refuses to acknowledge us as workers.

As universities increasingly rely on part-time contingent employees to keep personnel costs down, they also deny them basic rights they are owed as employees. Non-tenure track faculty and graduate assistants teach classes or conduct research, being paid a fraction of the cost fulltime faculty with the same teaching or research load. They are denied standard benefits like healthcare and childcare. Perhaps most importantly, they lack a voice in the administrative processes that oversee their employment, and they have no security that their jobs or stipends will remain from one year to the next. This is where a union is necessary. United, we have an equal voice in determining our contracts and work conditions. We can work together with the administration to create a better working environment for all employees. Marquette NTT and graduate workers do not want to stand in opposition to the administration but to work in partnership with them. That is what a union does. It will grant employees an equal responsibility to guide the success of the university as both an institution of learning and a fair and respectful workplace for all employees. I, for one, hope the administration will give us a fair process to win our union and will meet us at the bargaining table in good faith.

My campus, the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, has had a tumultuous year of dealing with a budget deficit of $8 million over the next three years. It started as an announced administrative “document/plan” to cut 13 liberal arts majors, followed by a “reduced plan” to cut six majors and tenured faculty, and then ultimately a “pulled-back plan” not to cut those majors or layoff tenured faculty. All of this on top of an unplanned merger with two of the UW Colleges back in October 2017.

The recent news that nothing would be cut is being extolled as a victory for UWSP faculty and staff. But it comes at a great cost: the pain of the past year is not being covered in the media. The great cost is in those who have resigned, retired (with an emphasis on how retiring would help the campus in this budget crisis – good will exploited by administration), were not retained, or have been let go. Right now, the campus is going through requests for proposals to see which entities on campus may be outsourced, such as Dining Services or the University Store/Bookstore. Outsourcing, in turn, will likely result in the further attrition of the UWSP community and privatizing services.

Our campus does not have a true comprehensive plan. The administration forms committees, conducts siloed conversations within certain colleges, hires consulting firms that use a “play book” to save money when they often do not understand the complexities and politics of the organization they are working for, gathers data that seems to be inaccurate, deficient, or inconsistent, fails to build consensus, and, strangely, introduces “campus conversations” through the media. Put these things together and you leave a campus feeling unsteady. More than unsteady. Rather unstable. And angry. Or rather furious.

There is a lot of pain here. Pain that has destroyed the livelihoods of many. Pain that is the human cost of those who left because they could not afford to have their families be put through the “not knowing” if they would be fired or their program eliminated. Many relocated here, committed to the campus, and established roots in this place. Many considered UWSP their permanent home. The pain of what became a “divide and conquer” mode of operation where people started fighting for survival of their departments, undermined our collective voice. Dividing and conquering broke many friendships. The difference between personal and professional criticism became blurred. These experiences caused physical and mental pain for some. The pain of seeing years of hard work and study in a discipline you feel passionate about being stripped away as history or philosophy or art had no purpose for the “21st century university where we need to innovate.”

People deal with pain differently. Some may put on their boxing gloves and are ready to fight at all costs. Others must step back because they cannot manage to fight while trying to teach, parent, or deal with personal issues (cancer, death of parents, ill relatives). Some choose to not be involved, while others are legitimately afraid to speak out. It can also create a strange pattern of internal communication when you refer to a policy, such as the UW Board of Regents Policy 20-24 where tenured faculty can be laid off due to program elimination, and where Stevens Point was the first test case, and some faculty had never heard of the policy before, even while we were knee-deep in it.

The hours faculty and staff put into committees this past year attending to this crisis could have been put into their teaching and research in what was likely thousands of people hours. Doing this work is frustrating, because the results are rarely fully heard by administration. There was never a response to reports, proposals, or recommendations that were put forth. We felt essentially ignored while simultaneously being told by administration that they had “robust conversations with departments.”

There is no “hard evidence” to prove that all our work had any effect on the outcome of what the administration has now proposed – to retain the majors and not layoff tenured faculty. The “victory” is that the mounting pressure from these groups, faculty, staff, students, the media, and professional associations over the last year likely had an impact on that decision. But it is not the type of victory where one stands up and jumps for joy. It is a sobering pyrrhic “victory.” Mistrust is deep and has grown. That does not dissipate over one announcement. It may be more a momentary relief.

We are now being told how important it is for us to have positive stories and “our positive message” for the media to retain people and attract them to come here. That can only happen if people feel there is something based in reality to feel optimistic about. But the reality of the last year has been a disaster. Many feel there is incompetence at the helm, and we are suffering for it. Any attempts by groups who have signed open letters to the UW System calling for a new administration, or expressing dissatisfaction, failed. Even the media has been suspect because it has been one-sided in its portrayal. Media stories, for the most part, seem to be based on UWSP press releases rather than the voice of the workers. It feels as those in power are controlling the narrative, and that is easier to do in a time when media concentration is the norm.

The future here is hard to predict. Higher Education, as we all know, is in a crisis and has been for quite some time. Every day there is an announcement of some campus closing, departments or programs being eliminated, faculty being laid off. The reasons are plenty – neoliberalism, anti-intellectualism, reduced budgets at the state and federal levels, smaller enrollments, demographics, cost of higher education, lack of career-focused programs, and the list goes on. Campuses tend to deal with these issues when they are amid a crisis, not necessarily before, or at least not planning in any productive way beforehand. It can be difficult to plan for a crisis when that critical period, crunch, or catastrophe is unpredictable. But there are certain benchmarks that are predictable that can be planned for in a comprehensive way.

I asked our chancellor recently what upper administrators at the UW System level discuss when they talk about the higher education crisis. He said they don’t. Their time is spent putting out fires and dealing with immediate situations at hand. I believe him. But if the people at the top are not having these discussions about the state of higher education, who is? How many more campuses may lay off tenured faculty, eliminate programs, or close altogether? Those are the stories we do hear in the news. The untold stories are those where stress has affected health, tears families and friendships apart, forces people to relocate, and students suffer with fewer options and choices for their futures and careers. Those are the stories we do not often hear. People suffering in silence.

Here are the finalists for the Dean position for the College of General Studies. The person hired is going to be an important member of the UWM community. So worth checking them out when they visit campus:

The candidates will visit campus in May. Their CVs are now online at https://uwm.edu/secu/cgs-finalists/, and more details will be shared as they become available. Campus interview dates and open forum sessions are listed below, and complete visit schedules will be posted when finalized. A live webcast of each open forum presentation will be available for those unable to attend. Webcast links will be posted on the main finalists page.

APRIL 18: The UWM Faculty Senate today voted to support a resolution that service to the UWM AAUP Chapter should count as service to the university, for the purposes of tenure, promotion, and post-tenure review. The resolution, now known as UWM Faculty Document #3230, is posted below.

What this means: all faculty are free to use the portion of their workload devoted to service to further our collective interests through supporting AAUP’s signal issues of academic freedom and faculty governance. So, if you’ve been waiting to join us, now is the time!

We will be posting information for our spring meeting soon. Please come and get involved. All are welcome: graduate students, faculty and academic staff.

We need all of us!

University of Wisconsin

Milwaukee Faculty Document No.3230

,

April 4, 2019

University of Wisconsin

Milwaukee Faculty Senate:

Resolution to Count Service to UWM AAUP as Service to UWM

WHEREAS

democratic and representative faculty governance has suffered severe setbacks from

the political climate and consequences created by Act 55 in 2015; and

WHEREAS, under the Wisconsin Idea, the public university is mandated to foster

academic freedom and to serve all people in the state; and

WHEREAS UWM AAUP was founded in 2015 to preserve academic freedom and faculty

governance in the UW system and has struggled mightily

and effectively to this end,representing the interests of tenured and tenure track as well as teaching academic staff; and

WHEREAS faculty have seen an escalation in their workload and professional expectations,emanating from the increasing pressures of the tenure track as well as the newly imposed system of Post Tenure Review; and

WHEREAS,it is therefore difficult for faculty to balance university service, teaching, and

research with the important work of UWM AAUP;and

WHEREAS, nevertheless, many faculty spend numerous hours working to uphold the values of academic freedom and faculty governance through supporting UWM AAUP; and

WHEREAS this labor resembles other kinds of university service in the kind of

work and dedication required, as well as its utility to maintaining the university’s function;

BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee directs the Chancellor to support our campus by endorsing the following policy:

Recognizing the value of the labor of UWM AAUP members, the Chancellor endorses the policy of including service to the organization, in the form of committee membership, as a form of service to the university, and advises academic units to count it for tenure, promotion, and post-tenure review.

Further, we ask that the UWM AAUP be included as a reporting unit to Faculty Senate, and report once a semester to that body

While the Chancellor’s campus email was welcome for its transparency regarding administrative planning, AAUP finds it important to include arguments that analyze UWM’s challenges in a different way. The following is a point-by-point response that reaches slightly different conclusions regarding the state of affairs

Demographic Shifts

With the graying of the baby boomers, there is no doubt about the large demographic shift taking place in the United States. While people 65 years and older constituted only 15 percent of the population in 2016, they are projected to constitute 21 percent by 2030 and 23 percent by 2060 (census.gov). Comparatively, children under 18 years will grow in absolute numbers but their portion in the population may decrease; e.g., 22 percent (73.6m) in 2016 to about 21 percent (75.4m) in 2030.

For higher education, however, absolute numbers of younger groups matter more than their ratio in the total population. As academic institutions, it is important for us to be specific and precise, and thus, consider Wisconsin’s actual numbers, not national and regional projections that can always turn out to be otherwise:

The following are the actual enrollment numbers of 12th graders in Wisconsin (WISEdash) compared with UWM’s freshmen enrollments. It’s important to base our current policies not simply on general projections from one source (Nathan Grawe’s book) but actual Wisconsin data. We do not want to find ourselves barking up the wrong tree while addressing an issue.

Year

Wisc. 12th Grd Enrollment

UWM new frosh fall headcount WIsconsin Resident Total

2012-13

66,454

2,982

3,321

2013-14

65,682

2,725

3,131

2014-15

65,431

2,823

3,286

2015-16

65,819

2,738

3,185

2016-17

65,832

2,535

3,000

2017-18

66,542

2,631

3,105

2018-19

66,130

2,559

3,095

These data may have small inaccuracies but it’s clear that the recent decline in UWM’s Wisconsin resident students doesn’t directly correlate with “fewer college-aged students resulting in declining enrollments.” The number of college-aged students in Wisconsin may have seen a drop 8-10 years ago but since 2014 their number has actually been inching up while our enrollments have been inching down. The decline may have other immediate possible causes, such as UW system’s support for Madison’s increased in-state enrollments. The larger context suggests that enrollment declines are disproportionately impacting smaller schools, and a university like UWM, if properly led, should not lose this competition for enrollments.

Cost of Higher Education

The cost of higher education and student debt are definitely of major national concern. UWM can take the lead by joining other universities in advocating a drastic increase in federal and state funding based on existing research.

Yet UWM is one of the least expensive universities in the region. Ideally, this should allow us to recruit more students, not fewer. Therefore, it is likely that, like the demographic shift, our competitive weakness relative to others may not be due to the expense of education.

Public questioning of the value of a college degree

While the public has every right to question the growing costs of higher education (though, UWM is not part of that constellation), no one questions the importance of higher education as a public good. Indeed, the importance of a college degree is only growing. “By 2027, total undergraduate enrollment is projected to increase to 17.4 million students. In fall 2016, total undergraduate enrollment in degree-granting postsecondary institutions was 16.9 million students, an increase of 28 percent from 2000, when enrollment was 13.2 million students” (https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cha.asp). It’s counter-productive to relay dubious claims about the college degree. As the institutional make-up of world society grows in complexity, the need for higher education should grow correspondingly. A population that doesn’t understand how the world works cannot help the world work better.

Employers, Skills, and the Purposes of Higher Education

There are two important reasons why AAUP thinks it’s dangerous to try to closely align education with employer expectations.

First, the academy has always been responding to the stimulations from the world outside. UWM just approved a new major in environmental engineering because of its growing importance in the world. These academic responses have been organic in nature. Because the collective intelligence of research faculty in the country is far greater than the collective intelligence of a small set of college administrators, it is important for administrators not to chase every new industry or skill in search of satisfying local or regional employers. It’s not the computer industry that gave rise to computer science, it is academic computer science that gave rise to the computer industry, starting with the proposal by Gottfried Leibniz, a seventeenth-century philosopher and mathematician, to build machines for valid inferences through a “calculus of reason” (calculus ratiocinator). One can apply the same logic to nuclear and genetic industries. Academic disciplines forge new paths through an internal dynamic while receiving stimulations from the outside world. It’s important for college administrators not to start betting on new industries and future job markets, and start meddling with the organic movement of academic disciplines. Let’s give our students fundamental principles and foundational skills from computer science to communication so that they become capable of learning new programming languages and new media platforms on their own, as and when needed.

Second, the skills gap argument—that there is a gap between the skills job seekers currently have and the skills employers need—has been debunked by many studies in economics and education. Some skills gap is unavoidable under the best of conditions, as some positions will always remain unfilled even while some workers are unemployed. However, “the belief that America suffers from a severe ‘skills gap,’ economist Paul Krugman writes, is…an idea that should have been killed by evidence, but refuses to die.” Were there an actual skills gap, one would witness a rise in wages in those areas, but no such wage increase is taking place.

Growing competition in higher education and low-cost models

Competition in higher education is a reality. But it’s important for UWM to know the category in which it is competing. Chasing everything, from lower-cost models to new curriculum delivery modes, may not be the answer. We are delivering lower-cost education with online programs already in place. We can capitalize on those strengths but UWM must also figure out who its competitors are. Are community colleges, for-profit colleges, or MOOCs our competitors? AAUP views none of these players as UWM’s competitors.

I am writing to share an update from our UW-Whitewater chapter regarding the chancellor search that is under way there. This is the first chancellor search to take place anywhere in the UW System since the Board of Regents made changes to the search and screen process for chancellors, once in 2015 and then again in 2017.

As you may know, the 2017 changes incorporated a new statutory requirement prohibiting UW institutions from requiring chancellors to have the customary academic qualifications.

The petition already has over 300 signatures. I hope that we can show our support from all across the state, and help our Whitewater colleagues show the Regents how important this is.

Much as UW-Stevens Point is the first test case for the new faculty termination policies in RPD 20-24, UW-Whitewater is the first test case for the new chancellor search process in RPD 6-4. As elsewhere, the new process concentrates power in the hands of the Regents. Previously, search and screen committees had to consist of at least half faculty from the institution in question; now, the committee has 10 members, of whom 5 are Regents, and only 2 are faculty.